Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Page Title versus H1 title

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Page Title versus H1 title

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    7
    45786
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • amybethmegjo
      amybethmegjo last edited by

      What's the difference between the Page Title and the H1 title? It seems like both summarize the page. Is it a wasted opportunity to make them the same? Should they be similar but slightly different?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • emilydavidson
        emilydavidson @amybethmegjo last edited by

        of course! so my recommendation would be to inspect the page (with chrome dev tools) and see if it is styled as an H1, and if it isn't styled as a true H1, I would add that as a task to your backlog but I wouldn't suggest that you make it higher priority then other more important ranking factors. That being said, most of these SEO best practice recommendations come from people doing tests and identifying trends, so there is no 100% solid answer that "yes you NEED it to be styled as a true H1" or "no it does not matter at all".

        My personal opinion is that it still carries some value, so if you can figure it out, I would recommend that you do have it read as a true H1 tag. Even if it does not impact your rankings significantly, I think that your site will be better off following all recommended best practices.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • amybethmegjo
          amybethmegjo @emilydavidson last edited by

          Thank you for the over and above response!

          My quandry is that the text that is really the "H1" on each page is done in a certain styling on the web platform such that we can't control the text for it to be an H1. We can't choose it with a menu or do it on the back end through code and tagging. (Maybe we could if we really dig into it, not sure.)

          The text is very clear on the page and functions exactly in the way I believe an H1 should function, clarifying what the page is about (similar to the page title but not always exactly that same words). We like the styling, and it's clear and visual. I was wondering if we should worry that tools like Moz Pro don't see it officially as an H1. It seems from most things I'm hearing is that it functions as an H1 already and we don't need to spend the time to get it to be stylized as official H1. That's why I was wondering exactly what H1s are for and why they are important. If it's for directing the viewer on the page, we've done that. If it's for something more that needs official H1 "status" we don't have that.

          emilydavidson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • amybethmegjo
            amybethmegjo @Alick300 last edited by

            Thank you for the response! I really appreciate it.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • emilydavidson
              emilydavidson last edited by

              Title Tags = Page Titles (if you're using a CMS, it is usually called page title, not title tag).Your title tag is the name that appears on your browser tab. This is one of the first places that search engine spiders crawl to see what a page is about. When it comes to SERP ranking, your title tag has far far more of an influence then the H1 does. In fact, so many people used to keyword stuff the H1 and use it for spam, that it no longer has much of impact at all, if any. The H1 of a page is now more intended for the user to get a clear idea of what they are about to read, as well as styling of your pages. Moz recommends the following format for your title tag:  Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. However, if your title tag doesn't match what content of the page is about, than you're spamming.

              Here's an example: Let's say you have a page about why organic apples are the best, and you sell organic fruit and your brand name is organics (which is probably a real brand name but oh well, it's for this example). Your title tag (page title) could be this: Why Organic Apples Are Better - Premium Organic Fruit | Organics. But your H1 could be: "Why You Should Start Eating Organic Apples Only" or "Why You Should Avoid Non-Organic Apples" and it would be the first thing on-page.

              amybethmegjo 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Alick300
                Alick300 last edited by

                Hi,

                Main Differences:

                Title Tags appear in search engines and the Web browser’s title bar
                          H1 Headers appear within the body text of the webpage
                          Search engines give more weight to Title Tags than H1 Headers

                Please check this old thread on similar query @ https://moz.com/community/q/can-h1-and-meta-title-be-exactly-the-same-why-not

                Hope this helps.

                Thanks

                amybethmegjo 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                • AL123al
                  AL123al last edited by

                  Hello,

                  I refer to this Moz article when writing Meta Title tags https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag with the optimal format:

                  Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

                  The H1 tag would look unnatural in the same format. Personally I use the H1 tag to focus on my primary keyword if the page is mostly focusing on the primary keyword. The H1 tag should provide a good user experience when a visitor lands on the page and give an indication of the content within. If you make it unreadable it will result in a bounce back to the SERP.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • AnkitS.1990

                    I have updated title 4 days ago but still still showing old title and description on Google serps, How to resolve it?

                    I have updated the title tag but not showing, Please have look at the view source for this website- https://m.yolobus.in/ I want to show this title and description- <title>Online Bus Ticket Booking | YoloBus India</title> But showing the wrong title and description on google SERP- Title - YoloBus :: Home Description - Delhi Lucknow; Lucknow Delhi; Delhi Gorakhpur; Varanasi Lucknow; Gorakhpur Delhi; Delhi Delhi; Bangalore Bangalore; Manali Manali; Chennai Chennai 7mHsdmu

                    On-Page Optimization | | AnkitS.1990
                    0
                  • rajam

                    Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?

                    Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.

                    On-Page Optimization | | rajam
                    0
                  • kcourtem

                    Colons in title tag?

                    Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user.  Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines.  My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes.  The tags are constructed as follows:  (brand)(model) : (size).   Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way?  Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?

                    On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem
                    0
                  • MarieA

                    301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page

                    Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...

                    On-Page Optimization | | MarieA
                    1
                  • travelclickseo

                    H1 tag in the footer?

                    Quick question: I have been scouring SEOMoz.org along with webmaster forums looking for an answer, but we have a person who insists that the H1 tag be located in the Footer. I feel that is is fundamentally wrong because it is not the intent of the H1 tag, and I do not believe it is a best practice. That being said would we see what little value the H1 tag has disappear if we put it in the footer, would we be penalized, or am I being too vanilla by wanting to keep it in the Title position?

                    On-Page Optimization | | travelclickseo
                    0
                  • daveupton

                    Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?

                    Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
                    1. Header is linked
                    2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
                    3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
                    1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
                    The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website.   There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though.  I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]

                    On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
                    0
                  • MeghanPrudencio

                    Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?

                    Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy

                    On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio
                    0
                  • smaavie

                    Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?

                    We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
                    Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
                    Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
                    find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
                    find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards

                    On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
                    5

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.